


Boys Will Always Break Your Heart

by fourteencandles (thingsbaker)



Category: Entourage
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mom POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:58:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/fourteencandles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys are coming to town and staying for a while, a month, maybe, because Vincent has a new part in a big movie — “Scorcese, Ma! Pretty cool, huh?” — and he wants to just soak things in. Lois holds her tongue about that, too — as far as she can tell, Vincent Chase has spent the better part of the last few years just soaking things in, letting things happen to him, letting Eric make things happen. She holds her tongue because it wasn’t always that way, because both of the Chase boys probably deserve some easy goodness in their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was my inevitable apology to Eric's mom for October in "People Come Around" (which is in another universe). Beta-read by Shoshannagold and originally posted in 2008 on Livejournal.

Eric calls and says the boys are coming home. “You mind if I stay with you, Ma?”  
  
“Of course,” Lois says, “of course, honey.” She doesn’t ask about money, about why he isn’t staying in a hotel, because she’s learned not to mention it. Eric is an adult now, he takes care of himself, and he’s adamant about that. Money is a touchy subject, between them: two Christmases ago Eric sent a check, a big check, and Lois sent it right back, because Christmas was never supposed to be about money. This year, a nice young man from the electronics store came over the day before Christmas and installed a big, flat television and a small box, a TiVo, and he even programmed it to record Oprah every afternoon. When he called that evening, Eric sounded nervous until Lois said, “Dear, do you think I’d turn down Oprah?” and then he laughed.  
  
Now he’s talking fast and she can tell he’s excited, maybe a little stressed. The boys are coming to town and staying for a while, a month, maybe, because Vincent has a new part in a big movie — “Scorcese, Ma! Pretty cool, huh?” — and he wants to just soak things in. Lois holds her tongue about that, too — as far as she can tell, Vincent Chase has spent the better part of the last few years just soaking things in, letting things happen to him, letting Eric make things happen. She holds her tongue because it wasn’t always that way, because both of the Chase boys probably deserve some easy goodness in their lives.  
  
“So I’ll see you Saturday? Ma? Is that OK?”  
  
“That’s fine, Eric,” she says. “Saturday, what time? You want dinner?”  
  
There’s a pause. “Actually, yeah,” he says. “That’d be great.”  
  
Lois starts to write a shopping list on the back of an envelope from the electric company. “All right, honey. You call and let me know more when you know more.”  
  
“All right. Love you, Ma,” he says.  
  
“Eric, I love you, too,” she says. She takes a minute to untangle the cord, then hangs the phone up on the wall and smiles. She didn’t ask about the hotel, in part, because it will be nice to have him home. He has always been a sweet boy. Endlessly sweet. She thinks if he’d grown up somewhere else — the middle of the country, maybe, or upstate — maybe it would be more obvious. As it is, the sweetness was buried once he started school, and though he’s always been a good boy — knows better than to talk back to his mother, for one — she knows he comes off harder than he is. Tough. Scrappy, one of the teachers called him. She used to hear him talking with the boys on the stoop, everyone exaggerating, and it used to surprise her to hear her Eric, her earnest, sweet boy, come up with fast little lines that made her gasp while the other boys laughed. But he does all right, now, and there was no other way she could have raised him. Nothing else she could have done.  
  


* * *

  
  
She goes to the market down the block to pick things up on Friday after work, and she plans for a feast: ten pounds of roasting meat, onions, carrots, a bag of yellow potatoes. Eric didn’t say the other boys would be coming, but she knows he’s never without. She buys two bags of Doritos — on sale — and loads a few two-liter bottles of store-brand cola into the cart, then pushes the whole thing to the front. A woman with a skinny child is waiting on the cashier to figure out how to cash out with WIC coupons. Lois looks away, because that’s what she always appreciated, back when there were food stamps in her hand.  
  
When she looks up again, she sees the cashier talking to a frazzled looking blonde, the manager, and she smiles in recognition. “Mrs. Murphy, how are you?” the manager says while the cashier finishes the other woman’s transaction.  
  
“Oh, getting along, Meg,” she says. Beautiful girl, in Eric’s same class at school. Lois sees her maybe once or twice a month, sometimes here, sometimes at church, where Meg leads a children’s class after the sermon. She’s back in school, working to be a teacher, and they often chat about this. Today, though, Meg takes a look in her cart and says, “Feeding an army?”  
  
“The boys are coming back,” Lois says. “Eric and his friends, from California.”  
  
Meg smiles. “Well, that’s good, you must be looking forward to seeing them.”  
  
“I am,” Lois says. “They’ll be around all month, I think. You ought to stop in and say hello, I’m sure Eric would love to see you. He was just saying, he doesn’t get to talk to too many people in the neighborhood anymore.” He didn’t say that, exactly, but Eric is a good boy, courteous, and would never contradict his mother.  
  
“I will,” Megan says, smiling her bright smile, touching her blonde hair. “I’ll try.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The first night in Eric calls from the airport to let her know they’ve got a car, they’re on the way. “Is it OK, I told the other guys you were making something,” he says.  
  
“With everything I’ve got cooking, you tell them to bring their appetites,” she says. “You aren’t on any California diets now, are you?”  
  
“Ma,” he says, and he laughs, so she laughs, too, and hangs up the phone. The roast is simmering in a deep-sided pan in the oven, and the whole house is heavy with the smell of roasted meat and sweet carrots. She starts to get down the plates, then decides, no, they’re spoiled enough. It’s Joe’s voice in her head when she closes the cupboards, saying, “You’ll spoil that boy, you’ll just turn him rotten.” For a second he’s there, again, back in the kitchen, sitting at the dining table and looking over at her with his usual amused smirk, teasing her that someday she’s gonna turn their boy into a prissy freak like his cousin.  
  
She doesn’t worry. Eric is as grounded as a boy living his life could be. She knows this, she gets the reports from his own mouth and from her friends. Last month, Ada Turtletaub came over and they had a good chuckle over their dueling phone calls: hers from Eric, complaining that Reuben, who he still calls Turtle, wouldn’t see reason; Ada’s from her son, complaining that Eric was making him pay for damages to the car out of his own money, instead of Vincent’s.  
  
Each time he comes home, each time he calls, even, she expects to see evidence of his new life. She expects to see changes, to see California, L.A., these movie star rules, in his walk or his step or his attitude. And this time, when he steps out of the car — a slick black car, more expensive than anything else within driving distance, one of the new model Lincolns — she sees a glimmer of it in his sharp, black shirt, in the crisp cut of his hair. But the first thing he does is hurry to the back to grab his bags, and then he jogs — doesn’t just amble, like the Chase boys are doing, but puts a little run into it — up her stairs. “Ma?”  
  
“Honey, in here,” she says, and he walks right in to the kitchen, drops his bag in a chair, and hugs her. She can smell the tin air of the airplane on him, and beneath that something else that’s new, cologne or aftershave, but he grabs her like always, enthusiastic and strong, and she thinks only, My boy.  
  
“You had a good flight?”  
  
“All right,” he says, pulling back just as quickly as he approached her. “You look good, Ma.”  
  
She smiles. “And you, these clothes,” she says, touching his shoulder, and he ducks his head just a little.  
  
“It’s been a good year,” he says, shrugging. He looks good, really; he looks fit, and he has the California tan that Lois has been expecting for the past few years. How he can get that skin to do anything but burn, she can’t imagine; Joe used to flush red at the mention of the sun. There’s a dusting of reddish hair peeking out the top of his shirt, and it’s a little jarring to Lois to notice it, to remember that her baby has really grown up.  
  
She pats his cheek and rests one hand on his shoulder, which feels sharp and muscled under her hand. “It’s good to see you.”  
  
“It’s good to see you, too,” he says, and he shakes his head and keeps smiling.   
  
“You want to put your bags upstairs? Dinner will be a few more minutes.”  
  
“Yeah, of course,” he says. “My room, right?”  
  
“Did you think I’d started sewing?” she asks, and he laughs as he walks out.  
  
She turns to the oven, again, decides the meat can come out. It will be better for sitting a few minutes, anyway. She’s just trying to decide whether to thicken the juices for gravy when there’s a thump at their door, and then she hears a familiar voice. “God, it smells amazing in here.”  
  
She hears about him on the phone and reads about him occasionally in magazines, in the  _Post_ , in the pieces Eric sends her over the computer, and she forgets, sometimes, that Vincent Chase was once a sweet little boy like her own. When he ducks his head into the kitchen, though, his smile isn’t the one she sees beaming on the movie screens but the one she recognizes from childhood, from school playgrounds, from when he used to sit next to her, sometimes, at Eric’s baseball games, just a quick, almost shy smile. “Vincent,” she says, and the eyes go wide now, too, and she holds out her hands.  
  
“Hi, Mom,” he says, which is what he’s always called her. She’s not sure when it started, maybe around the first time Eric brought him home for dinner, but Vincent’s always called her Mom and she’s never thought to suggest otherwise. He’s thirty, now, like Eric, and he still folds up under her arms like a skinny seven year old with a scraped knee.  
  
“So thin,” she says, and he shakes his head, his laughter rumbling under her hands. “Do I have to teach Eric to cook?”  
  
“He does enough,” Vincent says, his voice deep but soft, caring, and that’s a change. That’s not California, that’s maturity. Lois pulls back, her hands still on his arms, and looks up at him. He is a pretty boy, not just handsome like his father (though he has Lou’s coloring), or striking like his mother (though his wavy dark hair is pure Rita), but really quite beautiful. She can understand why the girls like him so much; thirty years ago, she might have been mad for a boy like this, too.  
  
“Well, tonight, you eat,” she says, and he agrees with a big grin. “Like you’re fifteen and haven’t heard of calories.”  
  
“He still hasn’t,” Eric says, dropping off the last stair. He leans against the door-frame; his face looks fresh-scrubbed. “You think this is from a diet, Ma, you ought to watch him put away the pizza.”  
  
“Everybody’s picking on me,” Vincent says. “I could’ve stayed home for this treatment.” But he’s smiling, and he takes a step back and leans on the other side of the door frame.  
  
“Make yourselves useful,” Lois says, and opens the plate cabinet.  
  
The boys set the table amiably, and Reuben and Johnny show up just in time to do nothing. Some things don’t change. They gather around her dinner table and make the same loud noises of gratitude and hunger and pleasure that they used to make in high school, when Eric started bringing them by on Saturday afternoons for big dinners. He did it then to fill up the space after Joe died, and Lois knows it was a gift, Eric giving her a reason to cook for more than just them. Now, the boys are back and Lois accepts every compliment with a smile she feels like she hasn’t broken out in years.  
  
Afterwards, Eric makes Reuben and Johnny do the dishes — which is easy work, now there’s a dishwasher — and while they work and grumble the other three retire to the living room. Lois says, “I thought you boys would want to go out, maybe, see some people your first night back.”  
  
Eric shrugs, and Vincent looks at him. “Maybe tomorrow,” he says. “I’m pretty beat, today. That’s a long flight.”  
  
“Yeah, Johnny and I told Ma we’d be back,” Vincent says.  
  
After the dishes are done and each of the boys has paid a new compliment — and Johnny has asked for the recipe — the other three leave and it’s just Lois and Eric in the living room, the television muted in the background showing highlights from the Yankees game.  
  
“It’s good to have you home,” Lois says.  
  
“It’s good to be here,” Eric says.  
  
“And your friends,” she says.  
  
Eric smiles, and when he does, like always, he looks like his father. “Those guys — you’re a star, Ma, they loved that.”  
  
These days, she misses Joe mostly in the abstract, but seeing his smile on Eric’s face makes her stomach twist, just a bit, and she has to look away. “Vincent is very thin,” she says.  
  
“Yeah,” he agrees, and this is surprising; Lois expected disagreement, expected him to again make a joke. “He’s had a hard couple of months,” he says. “Lotta stuff going on.”  
  
When Vincent’s having a bad month, so is Eric, and Lois mentions this. Eric doesn’t look thin, but he does look tired; he does look a little worn. “Maybe,” he says, shrugging. “We’ve had our plates full recently.” He looks up and his mouth fixes into a thin line. Very grown up. “We needed this break,” he says.  
  
Lois doesn’t ask for a different reason, or a better one. She just nods, and pats his hand, and before she goes to bed, she kisses his smooth warm cheek.  
  


* * *

  
  
Lois wakes up at 6:15, like she has every day for the past fifteen years. She goes downstairs in her robe and slippers, sets up and turns on the coffee maker, snaps on the little radio in the kitchen, and then takes her shower while the coffee brews. Then, back in the robe, she pours a cup of coffee and goes up to her bedroom and dresses for the day. She works eight to four weekdays and eight to noon on Saturdays at Del Rybek’s Chrysler dealership, running the phones, getting the customers coffee, doing whatever tasks Del comes up with. It’s a good job, full time with benefits, not too difficult so sometimes she can read a magazine when things are slow. She’s had the job since Eric was in high school; it was her first desk job, a reward for completing two years of night computer classes at the Queens Secretarial College. Del’s an old friend and a decent boss, and she could have easily asked for a weekend off while Eric was back. But she figures she’ll save it, and later if he has time she’ll take a day off and they’ll schlep out to Flushing to see Joe’s sister.  
  
When she walks back to the kitchen, Eric’s sitting at the table, one hand on the cover of the  _New York Times_ , one clutching a coffee mug. “Morning, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing his shoulder as she walks to the sink.  
  
“Morning,” he says. She rinses out her cup and sets it by the coffee pot, where she always keeps it so she can use it again when she gets home. Her finger hovers over the switch for the burner plate, and she glances back at Eric. He’s blinking slowly, heavily. She turns the burner off, then walks to the table.  
  
“You’re up early.”  
  
“Heard you get up,” he says, and she frowns.  
  
“Honey, did I wake you? I’m sorry, I’ve just gotten pretty used to the house being empty.”  
  
“Nah,” he says, stifling a yawn. “I’m usually up pretty early.”  
  
She bends and kisses his cheek. “Sweetheart, it’s the middle of the night in California. Go back to bed.”  
  
He looks up and blinks, then smiles, a soft sleepy childlike smile. “OK,” he says, and she pats his cheek and has to hurry away. Such a sweet boy, she thinks, locking the door behind her.  
  


* * *

  
  
When she gets home that afternoon, Eric isn’t around, but there’s a note on the kitchen table saying he’s out with Vincent and probably won’t be back for dinner. He signs it  _Love, Eric_ , and she smiles. Even in high school, he was good about things like this, let her know where he’d be and when. Of course, she was on her own by then, and maybe that was part of it, that man-of-the-house responsibility thrust suddenly on his shoulders. She never asked him to give anything up. She never asked him to stay in New York when his friends moved to California, and though she misses him, she’s glad he is where he is because he seems, for the most part, happy.  
  
Eric calls around nine, just when Lois is getting ready for bed. “We’re at Minsky’s,” he says. Jerry Minsky was a friend of Joe’s, and he passed many evenings in Jerry’s pub.  
  
“You seeing some people you know?”  
  
“Yeah, lots of people from the neighborhood,” Eric says. “I didn’t need anything,” he says, “but I felt like I should check in.”  
  
She smiles. “I’m glad you did, honey,” she says. “I won’t be up for much longer. It’s a long day.”  
  
“Will it bother you if I come in late? I can crash at the Chases’.”  
  
“No, you come on home,” she says. “You know me, I’ll sleep through anything once I’m there.”  
  
That’s not completely true, but she’s always told him it is. She always knew when he came in late in high school, and not just because he’d always be sweet and guilty and penitent the next day. Mothers have to keep some secrets, though, she thinks, so she just says again, “You come on home.”  
  
“All right. Get some rest.”  
  
Lois hears the front door close around midnight. She’s surprised, because she figured coming in late was two or three in the morning for Eric by now. Her door is closed, but she watches two sets of feet slip by under her door, and then Eric’s bedroom door opens and closes. She smiles. She always knew when he was up to this in high school, too. Back then it was usually Laura Pendergrass, a girl from two blocks over whose own mother was much less observant than Lois ever was. That was what worried her — that the girl would wind up pregnant, because her mother really thought she was spending all that time at church choir practice or over at some girlfriend’s house. Without Joe around, she asked her brother Carl to talk to Eric about being careful, and as nothing ever happened she assumes, still, that the talk went well.  
  
The bathroom separates her room from Eric’s room, and she figures that’s just as well because the mattress in there is the same one they bought for him when he turned five, sitting on the same fold-up Sears frame. It will be a wonder if it survives two adults, at this point, and for a moment Lois considers getting up and warning Eric about this. Then she snickers at herself, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.  
  


* * *

  
  
In the morning, Lois wakes up early by habit. On Sundays, she usually takes her time getting ready, and she decides today will be no exception, though she’s careful to wear the better of her two pairs of slippers around the house. She starts the coffee and settles in with the Sunday paper, warming up for the crossword with the Cryptoquip. She’s still working through the across clues when she hears feet on the stairs, and a minute later Eric slumps into the chair across from her. His hair is tousled, and he’s wearing a gray undershirt and boxers. His arms are well-muscled, now, and that surprises her just a bit. She wonders if he works out, if he’s joined a gym or something. Maybe he has a trainer like the movie stars in magazines.  
  
“You have fun last night?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, rubbing his eyes.  
  
Lois gets up and fills another mug with coffee, and Eric gulps it like water. “Thanks,” he says, and Lois nods.  
  
“I don’t have much around here for breakfast,” she says.  
  
“I’m not too hungry yet.” Lois raises an eyebrow, and Eric blushes, just a little.  
  
She’s not going to ask about who came home — who might still be upstairs — because it’s better if he thinks she doesn’t know. “You see anyone you know, out?” she asks.  
  
“Yeah, actually,” he says. “Ran into Meg Donato.”  
  
“Oh, that’s good,” she says. “What a nice girl, that one. I told her you were coming home. She was very excited.”  
  
Eric nods. “It was nice to see her, yeah,” he says. He doesn’t meet her eyes, and Lois smiles to herself. If it was Meg upstairs, well, that’s a little quick but it seems like good news. Lois doesn’t push, though; Eric will tell her when he’s ready.  
  
Instead, she says, “You want to go to church this morning?”  
  
She can tell he doesn’t want to, but he says yes, anyway, and that means something. Means a lot, really, and so she decides not to tell him that her own attendance has been particularly lax of late. Eric puts on a suit that makes Lois feel underdressed; she tells him to take off the jacket, even though he looks nice. “It’ll be too warm,” she says, and takes his arm for the three-block walk.  
  
The Chases aren’t in church — no surprise there — but the Turtletaubs are, as always. Lois stops to say hi to Ada and doesn’t miss Reuben’s eyeroll. “Knock it off, Turtle, you’re in church,” she hears Eric say after Reuben whispers something, and she pats Eric’s shoulder. Lois admires Ada’s dedication to attending church; she’s been a good Catholic as long as Lois has known her. They used to sit together when the boys were younger, when Joe was working a weekend shift and couldn’t make it into services and Ada’s husband, Karl, had already been to Temple for the weekend. These days, Karl is about as devout as Lois is, as far as she can tell, but Ada is as faithful and flashy as always. It’s a relief just to see her, and Lois reminds herself she should be attending more often, not just on special occasions like having her son home.  
  
Father Michael gives an OK sermon — not great, not nearly so good as old Father Patrick’s services, but OK. Lois says her usual prayers, for her brother’s gout, her sister’s lazy husband, her nephew’s troubles with the law. After the service, she pauses in the foyer to talk with old Bertha McIntyre, whose son Freddy was in Lois’s class in high school. Freddy McIntyre has taken Lois out a few times, recently. Nothing serious, nothing major, just a pasta dinner one night, a movie at the new theater, once, a show that he got tickets to through his job with an architectural firm. He’s a nice man and Lois wouldn’t mind seeing more of him, and so she stops to chat with Bertha, to find out when he’ll be back from his trip south.  
  
“I think Tuesday or Wednesday, dear,” Bertha says. She’s nearly blind, and Lois wonders how she’s made it to church at all. When she asks if she’d like a hand home, though, Bertha assures her that her daughter is around. Lois helps her find the daughter and then walks around the side entrance of the church to meet Eric at the front. He’s standing with Reuben near the stairs, staring out at the street, his arms crossed. “Where’d you guys go after the bar last night?” Reuben asks, and Lois pauses, hidden by a crowd of elderly women waiting on the shuttle van.  
  
“Home,” Eric says.  
  
“Not true,” Reuben says. “Vince wasn’t back when Drama got in.”  
  
“He came home with me,” Eric says, and Lois sighs. Well, too bad, she thinks. There’s still time for Meg, of course. And she can’t blame Vincent not wanting to wake Rita. The boy used to camp out at their place in high school, too, particularly when Rita had men home with her. Lois slides through the elderly crowd and taps Eric’s shoulder, startling him.  
  
“Oh, hey, Ma,” he says. “I wondered where you went.”  
  
“Hi, Mrs. M.,” Reuben says.  
  
“You boys have plans for lunch? I have leftovers,” she says, and Reuben’s eyes light up.  
  
“Lemme call Vince,” Eric says. “If that’s all right?”  
  
For a second, she thinks about saying no, about pointing out to Eric that he can make his own decisions, schedule his own time. But she’s already invited Reuben over, so she just says, “That’s fine, of course. He’s always welcome.”  
  
The boys come over for lunch, and Lois sets out leftover meat and bread for sandwiches. The chips get opened, the soda goes quickly. When she hears Johnny say, “Man, I could go for a beer, though,” she volunteers to go to the store.  
  
“No, sit down, honey, I’ve got it,” she says when Eric protests, says he or one of the other guys can go, give her a break. “I need to pick up a few things, anyway.”  
  
Eric looks guilty but he settles back on the couch beside Vincent, and Lois smiles as she steps outside. It’s good to have the noise in the house, really. She has a feeling that the boys are already at loose ends here, that they don’t quite know what to do with themselves or how best to spend their time. The last time they were all out for this long, it was a business trip — Vincent was there to film  _Queens Boulevard_. She’s sure they’ll settle back in soon, but for now it’s just nice having them close.  
  
Meg isn’t working at the store, which is disappointing but probably for the best. Lois picks up an eighteen-can pack of beer, along with a new quart of milk and more Bran Flakes, and slings them into the cart she often uses to shop. Rolling them back to the house, she laughs a little at herself, wondering what the people on the street must think of the woman with the cartful of Coors and cereal. This is certainly a more eventful trip than she usually takes.  
  
When she opens the door into her apartment, she blinks, and sniffs, and hears the hustle of the boys in the living room. She leaves the beer in the cart in the entryway and walks inside. Reuben looks like he’s waiting for permission to breathe; Johnny’s eyes are wide, his smile wider; Vincent is leaning back on the couch with one hand up over his mouth, like he might start laughing; and Eric, well, Eric looks like he always does when he’s feeling guilty, red-cheeked, wide-eyed, hands already in the air like he might have to defend himself against attack. Lois shakes her head and sniffs loudly, then holds out her hand.  
  
“Reuben,” she says. “Hand it over.”  
  
He looks at Eric, who shrugs, and finally Reuben exhales a cloud of smoke, then hands over a joint. “Lighter, too,” Lois says, and Reuben gives a short sigh but gives it to her.  
  
“You boys,” Lois says, shaking her head. “I leave you for twenty minutes, and not only do you start smoking up in my living room, but,” and as she says this, she puts the joint to her mouth, “you don’t even offer to share.” She sparks the end and inhales. “Have I taught you nothing?” she says, still holding in the smoke.  
  
“Ma!”  
  
Lois rolls her eyes. She holds until she starts to feel a burn in her throat, then exhales. “Eric, I grew up in the sixties,” she says. “Good grief, where do think all that confiscated pot went when you kids were younger?”  
  
Vincent finally laughs, and it’s the kind of warm, heavy laughter that’s contagious, so Lois hands the joint off to her son and laughs along. By the time she takes a seat at the other end of the couch, Vincent’s laughing so hard he’s bent double, and Eric taps his back a few times uncertainly.   
  
“You know, I guessed about Vin’s mom,” Reuben says. “But you, Mrs. M., you’re full of surprises.”  
  
She smiles and takes the last hit off the joint, holds it in, and then manages to produce a weak imitation of the smoke rings Reuben’s puffing out. All the boys laugh. “Parents are supposed to be mysterious,” she says.  
  
“They aren’t supposed to be stoners!” Eric says.  
  
“When did my boy turn into a prude?” Lois asks, and Reuben scoffs.  
  
“Birth,” he suggests, and Lois shakes her head.  
  
“I’m only a prude compared to you jackasses,” Eric says. “Sorry, Ma.”  
  
“It’s cute,” Vincent says, squeezing Eric’s shoulder. “He’s a good boy, Mom.”  
  
“Oh, I know,” she says, and she gives him a hug that elicits a little groan. “A very good boy.”  
  
Lois gets sleepy by 10:30, and she wanders off to bed, sensing the boys want to spend some time to themselves, anyway. Upstairs, she washes off her make-up and puts on her nightgown, brushes her teeth, and laughs a little hearing the boys’ voices float up from downstairs. She lays down and turns on the television and watches late-night re-runs for a while. They’re a little funnier than usual, which is another good reason that the boys and their marijuana should come by more often.  
  
Around midnight, the front door opening and closing wakes her with a jolt. She realizes it must be the other boys leaving, and she relaxes back into her pillows and turns off the television. Pot always makes her crave cigarettes. There’s only one pack in the house, way up at the top of a cabinet in the kitchen, wrapped in foil. Tonight, she’s willing to go to the trouble of getting them out. She waits until she’s sure the house is quiet to get up, and she slips on her housecoat and eases into the hall. The house is dark, but she knows her home well, knows where the floor will creak, where she’s likely to catch a toe on the carpet. She makes it downstairs without a sound, and pauses in the entryway to congratulate herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches movement in the living room, and eases over to poke her head around the door frame.  
  
It takes her a moment to make things out in the dark; at first, she can see only a slightly moving lump on the couch. The streetlight from outside provides just enough light, though, that she’s able to differentiate two figures, and she realizes with a start that two people are making out on her couch, and that one of them is Vincent Chase. She recognizes his hair, and then in the next second, she recognizes the fingers threading through it as Eric’s. She blinks and sees his shoes tangled with Vincent’s bare feet at the end of the couch, and then it hits home.  
  
The gasp escapes before she can stop herself, but she ducks back behind the wall at the same minute. The boys don’t seem to notice, at least; there’s no change in the sounds from the living room. Lois presses one hand to her pounding heart and eases back to the stairs. She takes a few slow, quiet breaths, then concentrates fully on climbing silently. In her bedroom, she closes the door and sits on the bed. My sweet boy, she thinks, and closes her eyes. In a way, it makes sense: she sees the pieces slide together. Vincent has always been strangely dependent on her son, and Eric’s been just as clingy and protective. How many boys would move across the entire country to help out their best friends? How many boys still live with their best friends once they turn thirty? Lois always thought their friendship was nice, admiring their loyalty to each other; it was Joe who said, a few times in middle school, that it might be nice to see his own kid without “The Chase Attachment” once in a while. Sure, she understood their friendship was a little closer than those between most of the boys his age, but she always thought Eric was just lucky. Lucky to have found a best friend, a lifelong friend, living right next door.  
  
So is it such a big step, then, she wonders, if his lifelong friend is maybe also his lifelong love? Her mind staggers on the word, and she wonders if maybe she’s reading too much into things — maybe they’re just experimenting, maybe this is the California reaction she’s been expecting. Maybe they’re just high and horny. But no, she reasons, Eric may surprise her — Eric may be surprising her — but he’s not casual in relationships. He’s thoughtful, and careful, and serious. If he’s sleeping with Vincent, then there’s something there.  
  
Sleeping with Vincent.  
  
Everything in her logical brain says she should be able to handle this new twist. She’s handled everything else life has ever thrown her. Knowing that her son is gay, well, she should be able to take it in stride.  
  
But there’s something heartbreaking about it. Things have always been such a fight for him. Smaller than almost every other boy in his class; fatherless from such a young age; and never enough money around. Now this? She opens her eyes and decides she’s not going to think more on it. Not yet. Eric is her son and she loves him and she always has, and that’s the end of it.  
  
She doesn’t sleep well, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

In the morning, she wakes up before the alarm. There’s a dull ache in her stomach, anxiety, maybe, and the warming knowledge that Eric’s been lying. She’s still standing in front of the coffee maker when Eric walks into the kitchen. He looks the same as before, hair ruffled, undershirt and shorts wrinkled, but now Lois wonders what’s sleep tousled and what’s the work of Vincent’s hands. It’s a little like high school all over again, she thinks, looking at his shoulders and neck, checking for hickeys. She doesn’t find anything but sheet creases on his skin.  
  
“Sleep OK?” she asks.  
  
He nods and joins her at the counter, staring at the coffee pot. “You?”  
  
“Antsy,” she says, and he smiles after a second.  
  
“Stoner,” he says, shaking his head.  
  
She smiles back. “You know, your father, pot used to get him a little excited.” Eric looks over, and she watches the meaning hit him; he winces. “Don’t blush. How do you think you came to be?”  
  
“Ma,” he says, almost a whine, “tell me you weren’t high when I was conceived.”  
  
“I can’t be sure,” she says, then laughs. “No, dear, don’t worry.” She pulls down two coffee cups. “I’m just wondering if you boys went out, afterwards, last night, or anything.”  
  
Eric shrugs. “Nah, the other guys went home around midnight.”  
  
Lois swallows. “All of them?”  
  
Eric glances over at her, leans against the counter sideways. “Vince stayed later,” he says.  
  
“Uh-huh.” Lois reaches for the sugar, offers it to Eric, and he waves it away. “Is he getting along OK with his mom?”  
  
“They’re fine,” he says, shrugging. “Has she been seeing anyone, recently?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Lois says. “Have you?”  
  
Eric’s eyes narrow. “Uh. Yeah, kind of,” he says.  
  
Lois nods. The coffee maker starts to hiss, steam rising from the top. “Anyone I know?”  
  
“Who do you know in L.A.?” Eric asks. She looks over at him, and he starts to blush again. He rubs the back of his neck. “Ma, you trying to ask me something?”  
  
She pulls the carafe out from the coffee maker and slides her mug under to catch the dripping coffee, then pours Eric a cup without spilling a drop. Still has the touch, from all those years as a waitress. Plus, concentrating like this gives her a minute to decide what she wants to say. She fills her own cup, then slides the carafe back into place. “I came downstairs last night,” she says.  
  
Eric’s eyes go wide. The hand reaching for his coffee cup jerks away as though he’s been burnt, though he never makes contact. “What did you see?” he asks, almost whispers.  
  
“Enough,” she says. She picks up her own mug and carries it to the dining table, while Eric stays put at the counter. “You have something you want to tell me?”  
  
She can see the tension in his shoulders from across the room. “Want is maybe a little strong of a word,” he says, slowly turning around. He looks, she thinks, about as embarrassed as he did when she caught him and his cousin Derek stealing magazines from under her brother’s bed. The coffee cup in his hands seems to draw all of his attention for a moment, and then he clears his throat. “So, Vince and I, we’ve been, uh, kind of, oh, Jesus.”  
  
“Eric,” she says, making her voice as gentle as possible, so he looks up. “Honey.” She taps the table, and after a minute he walks over, head down, again, and sits across from her. It doesn’t look likely that he’ll speak again, ever, so she finally says, “You’re dating Vincent?”  
  
He shrugs. “It’s not really like that,” he says.  
  
“So it’s just — experimenting?” she asks. She doesn’t like the slide of that word on her tongue; it makes her feel very old, and very distant from her son.  
  
“No,” he says, quickly, looking up. “I meant — we aren’t really dating. Like, we can’t go out.”  
  
She nods. “But you’re — together. Like a couple.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
She nods again, as though she understands, when really she has no picture of this. When Eric finally looks up, eyes darting to meet hers over his cup of coffee, she says, “Honey, just — start from the beginning, OK?”  
  
This time, he nods, and he sets his cup down and spreads out his hands. “We — we got together about a year ago,” he says. “I don’t know. Vince said it was sort of building for a while, but I was kind of surprised when he — he, uh, started things?” The way he says the last makes her think he’s asking for encouragement, and for permission to skip some of the details, so she nods. “And I, I don’t know. Things just work with us, Ma. Like they never have with anyone else.”  
  
“Who else knows?”  
  
“The other guys,” Eric says. “Vince’s publicist and his agent. We had to tell them, in case anything leaked.” He closes his eyes for a second, and lifts one hand to rub the bridge of his nose. It’s a Joe move. When he opens his eyes, he says, “I’m sorry, Ma. I know, I should have told you before, but — it’s just sort of weird, telling people.”  
  
She nods, understanding this, but not quite ready to say she forgives him. “Does Rita know?”  
  
“No,” he says. “But Vince wants to tell her. That’s part of the reason for the trip. Telling her, telling you, just sort of testing the waters, I guess.” He shrugs. “We’re pretty serious, Ma.”  
  
“What about that girl, the model, he was seeing?”  
  
Eric shrugs. “That was just for show. Something the publicist set up.”  
  
“Oh.” Now it’s Lois’s turn to look down at her cup. She’s not sure exactly what to say, here, or what to ask. What’s even allowed in this situation? she wonders. Can she ask about grandchildren? About whether they plan to get married, unioned, whatever it’s called? Have there — she swallows at this thought — been other men?  
  
When she looks up, Eric’s looking back at her, his eyes just as wide and full of confusion as hers probably are. She smiles, the kind of smile she learned when he was little, trying to tell him that going back to school wouldn’t be that bad. “Well, OK, then,” she says, and Eric looks skeptical.  
  
“OK?” he asks.  
  
She nods. “Do you have plans today?” He shrugs, still looking a little shell-shocked. Lois stands up and crosses to the phone by the fridge. “I think, I’m going to call Del and see about getting today off, and then maybe you and I can go over to Mac’s diner and have a decent breakfast. Something with strawberries. What do you say?”  
  
“I — yeah,” he says. “I could go for some strawberries.”  
  
“And some real coffee, instead of this decaf,” she says, and Eric makes a face.  
  
“Ma, you’re feeding me decaf?” He pushes the cup across the table. “Don’t you love me at all?”  
  
“Eric, honey, I love you more than anything,” she says, and she kisses him on the top of his head while she’s waiting for Del to answer at the dealership.  
  


* * *

  
  
At breakfast they talk a little more about it, though quietly, and she notices Eric never says Vincent’s name. She guesses this is a nod to his being a celebrity, and Eric confirms this. “Nobody can know,” he says. “It’s really important.”  
  
“I understand,” she says. She’s used to keeping things to herself; she’s about the only one she talks to, some days. She looks up, and sees that Eric’s just picking at his strawberry-topped pancakes. Maybe it’s time to change the subject, she decides, so she tells him about Freddy.   
  
Eric’s eyes narrow. “So when do I get to meet him?” he asks, and his smile is a little bit like a shark showing its teeth.  
  
“That depends,” she says. “Are you going to play nice?”  
  
“I’m always nice,” Eric says. “I just gotta know what his intentions are, right?”  
  
She grins. “Well, I believe his intentions are to wine and dine me until I agree to sleep with him.”  
  
Eric clutches his head. “You’ve gotta stop that,” he says.  
  
“It’s sex life amnesty day,” she says cheerfully. “I get to tell or ask whatever I want. You feel free to do the same.”  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” he says. “Can I phone a friend?”  
  
“I have questions for him, too,” she says, and Eric laughs.  
  
When the bill comes, he snatches it up and pays the whole thing over her protests. “Let me,” he says, and winks. “I’m marrying into money.”  
  
And so that’s it. She has other worries, concerns, questions, all of that, but she decides for now she’ll let it all slide if they can just get along, still, like always. If they can joke about it, if things can be the same, comfortable, like friends, then she can wait to find out more. Eric will tell her everything when he’s ready, and for now it’s enough to see how happy he is, how grateful, when she just plays along.  
  


* * *

  
  
Thursday night Freddy comes over for dinner, and Eric does play nice. He even clears the dishes while she and Freddy have a nightcap in the living room, and he shakes Freddy’s hand and agrees to golf with him sometime soon before he leaves. “He seems all right,” Eric says, as they’re sitting in the kitchen finishing off the pie and having a second nightcap.  
  
“He’s a nice man,” Lois says.  
  
“Just nice?” He raises one eyebrow, and Lois thinks, Oh, Joe, and looks down, puts a bite of pie in her mouth.  
  
“Well,” she says, “we can’t all date movie stars.”  
  
Eric blushes, just a little. “You know, you ever decide you want to move to California, I can set you up,” he says, scraping the final bits of cherry filling from his plate.  
  
“Eric, honey, if I ever decide to move to California, you should set me up with a good psychiatrist,” she says, and then smiles to show she’s mostly joking. “Plus, I used to say the only way I’d move out was if you kept my grandbabies out there. Now…”  
  
She expects him to blush, again, but instead he just shakes his head and takes a bite of her pie before speaking. “Tell you what, Ma, when we have kids, I’ll fly you out first class any time you want to visit. Hell, as much advice as we’ll need, maybe we’ll get you a jet of your own.”  
  
“That’s my California boy,” she says, patting his hand, and she can’t fight her smile. Grandchildren, she thinks, thank you, Lord. “Say, what are you boys doing tomorrow? There’s a good sale on ham down at the market. I could make dinner.”  
  
“That sounds great,” Eric says, drawing back, his mouth turning down, “but we sort of have plans.”  
  
“Dinner plans?” she says.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says, his voice slow, a little reluctant. “Rita’s having us all over.”  
  
“Oh. That sounds nice, sweetheart,” she says, and keeps looking at him until he glances up. “What is it, Eric?”  
  
“Vince wants, uh, we’re going to tell his mother,” he says, looking down again.  
  
Lois takes a quick breath. Every bad feeling she’s had, every doubt that’s been worrying the edge of her mind, flashes back to the forefront. The shock and hurt she held back won’t have such subtle treatment with Rita, she’s sure. “Oh, well,” she says, but she can’t think of anything nice to say. “Well. We’ll do the ham this weekend. Maybe after church. Is that all right?”  
  
He nods. They chat a little bit more about the weekend, the possibility of going out to Flushing, but she can see the worry in Eric’s tense shoulders. She’s not at all surprised when he excuses himself to go to bed early, and again not surprised to see him with his cell phone out before he’s reached the top of the stairs. Dinner with Rita would stress her out, too.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next day is slow at work, though Freddy stops by with lunch and to tell her he thought Eric seemed like a nice young man. He invites her to dinner the next week, with his mother and sister, and she accepts. Lois is pleasantly surprised when he kisses her briefly before leaving her at the dealership door.  
  
She’s still thinking about it when she gets home. Freddy is a good man, a kind man, and he’s a different kind of man than Joe. It’s not really like stepping out on him, she thinks, because she would never have considered Freddy McIntyre while Joe Murphy was on the earth. It still surprises her, some days, how much she can miss Joe, even after all these years without him. In a way, it’s comforting, because she knows this is what it’s supposed to be like between two people; it’s almost as comforting as it is painful to know that she will never forget him.  
  
She hangs her coat on the peg and stops at the picture of the three of them that’s framed in the hallway, taps one finger gently over Joe’s smiling image. He would want her to be happy, after all this time. He would want that for them all.  
  
“Ma?” Eric calls down from the top of the stairs. He’s wearing a navy sweater over a white collared shirt and jeans, and he looks like one of the preppy boys in the weekend flyers for sales at Macy’s.   
  
“What is it, honey?”  
  
“Have you seen my watch?”  
  
“It’s in the kitchen,” she says, without looking. He took it off the night before to do the dishes.  
  
He sighs, relief or frustration, and comes thundering down the stairs. She stands in the doorway and watches him fastening the watch, his face drawn, very serious, as always. Every task is all-consuming for Eric. It’s been this way since he was a baby. Now, though, there’s a heavier tension in the air, a certain way he’s holding his shoulders that looks painfully anxious. Lois barely resists the urge to pull him in close when he stops at the doorway, to smell his hair, the bend of his neck, to cup his beautiful boyish face. “When’s dinner?” she asks.  
  
“Six,” he says, which is twenty minutes away. He fusses with the cuff of his shirt. “Do you think — what do you think she’ll say?”  
  
Lois is struck by twin desires: she wants to reassure him, to tell him that things will be OK, but she also wants to prepare him, to be honest with him, and because balancing that is what she’s done his entire life this is what she does now. “It’s going to be a shock,” she says. “You know she loves Vincent, she loves you, too, honey, but — we were raised in a different time. A different way.”  
  
Eric nods and looks up, still serious. “That’s all a fancy way of saying that she’s gonna take it hard, huh?”  
  
“Maybe,” Lois says.  
  
He nods again, then he says, “I’m gonna call the other guys. I don’t — maybe we don’t need an audience.”   
  
Lois reaches out, then, and touches his cheek. It’s smooth and warm, the same as always; his eyes fix on hers and she doesn’t like the wideness, there, the fear and uncertainty. “And let me put on a jacket, all right?” Eric looks surprised, but Lois pushes ahead. She knows this woman better than either of these two boys, right now. “You may not want an audience, but I’m not going to let you go alone.”  
  
Eric nods, after a second. “Thank you, Ma.”  
  
She walks back to get her coat and listens to Eric on his phone, consulting with Vincent, telling him the change in plans. His voice is soft, soothing, almost tender, and she can guess that even implacable Vincent is feeling some of the same nerves. She goes upstairs to give him a minute, and she changes from her work blouse to a navy-and-white knit top that she bought last spring at the Liz Claiborne outlet. Not too dressy, but nice enough for company, certainly for Rita. She finds flat shoes and a sweater that match and checks her make-up, smoothes her hair down, and then goes back downstairs. Eric’s sitting on the living room couch, his hands dangling between his knees. He looks up. “Hey, you look nice,” he says.   
  
“I thought we’d match,” she says, smiling, and she coaxes a tiny smile from him, too. “Vincent was OK with the change in plans?”  
  
“He’s fine,” Eric says, and shakes his head. He glances at his watch. “Guess we should head over, huh?”  
  
He stands up slowly, and she wants to tell him they don’t have to go. She wants to offer to talk to Rita for him, but that’s not the way the world works. That’s not the way they work. Instead, she takes the arm he offers, and squeezes it tight as they walk the few yards over to the Chase front door.  
  
Vincent answers, and his eyes are wide and seem to barely register Lois’s presence. “I told her,” he says as they’re walking in the door, and Eric curses even as he helps Lois with her coat. “She knew something was up, so I told her.”  
  
“I thought you wanted to do it together,” Eric says.  
  
Vincent gives him a look that Lois knows, that she even likes, that says sometimes things don’t go like they’re planned. She is about to say something about this to him when Rita walks in, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a few glasses in the other. “Hello there,” she says, and Lois notices she’s not looking at Eric. “Drink before dinner?”  
  
“Always,” Lois says, and Rita pours her a glass, then stands and stares between the boys for a second. Eric scratches his neck, nervous.  
  
“Uh, thanks, Rita,” he says, when she hands him a sloppily filled glass. Vincent takes a glass, too, and drains it, like his mother, in a few quick gulps. Lois tastes the wine, which is a heavy, sour red, and realizes this isn’t a bad strategy. She downs the glass, then follows Eric in to the table.  
  
There’s quiet for a minute, heavy, uncomfortable, unappetizing quiet, so Lois dives in. She does all the work she can, asking Rita about work, about the food — a spaghetti casserole — and wine, about her family in Jersey. Lois even asks about Johnny, which finally draws Vincent into the conversation. Vincent sits across from Eric and beside both mothers at the four -person square and he and Eric don’t talk between themselves during the meal at all, though a few times Lois sees Vincent looking at him. She also sees Rita watching Vincent, and the look on her face makes Lois a little uncomfortable. But she doesn’t say anything untoward.  
  
At the end of the meal, when Lois is starting to wonder if she’s misjudged the woman, Rita brings out a store-bought cherry pie and sets it on the table. She hands Vincent a pie server, and while he sets slices on plates, she says, “I’ve got coffee, too. Both the regular kind and that fancy flavored stuff in the can.”  
  
“Regular’s fine,” Lois says, and Eric agrees.  
  
“You need some help?” Vincent asks.  
  
“I got it,” she says, and goes to the kitchen. Lois hears cabinets open and the clink of glasses.  
  
“Ma,” Eric says, turning toward her, “you’re a life saver.”  
  
“Seriously,” Vincent says, giving her the biggest piece of pie before settling back into his seat.   
  
He sounds so tired that Lois wonders if she’s missed something, if maybe Vincent is having a worse night than she can see. She wonders how the talk went before they arrived, remembering Vincent’s wide eyes at the door. “Good casserole, wasn’t it?” she says.  
  
“The best,” Vincent agrees, and Eric smiles.  
  
Rita comes back from the kitchen with four mugs on a tray. “These two are regular,” she says, putting cups in front of Lois and Eric. “And then, I got one more regular and a fancy cup.” She sets both of these down in front of Vincent.  
  
“You didn’t have to go to any trouble,” Vincent says. “Regular is fine. You know me.”  
  
“I don’t know that’s so true, anymore,” she says. “I didn’t know you were a fag, I probably don’t know how you like your coffee,” she says, and a fast, terrible silence settles over the table. Vincent sets his fork down; when Lois looks up from her plate, she sees his face is flushed, his eyes cast down.  
  
“Ma,” he says, softly.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Rita says, taking her seat. She doesn’t sound it. “Only I’m still getting used to it, you know.” She turns to Lois. “You know what I mean, right?”  
  
Lois clears her throat. She makes herself look at Eric, whose eyes are wide, pleading. “It was a surprise,” she says.  
  
“Exactly,” Rita says. “A surprise.” She tilts her head at Vincent. “You know, you raise kids, they do these things you never think they’ll do. Some good stuff, some stuff you think, Jesus, how bad must I have screwed up?”  
  
“Stop,” Vincent says.  
  
“But boys don’t listen, you know how it is. They do the opposite of what you want. They never -”  
  
“Ma, please,” Vincent says, “I’m asking you, don’t do this now.”  
  
“You’re asking me?” Rita leans in, and Lois has a sudden feeling like this has been building all evening, like no one’s going to escape this alive. “You’re  _asking_  me?”  
  
Lois glances at Eric, and he looks just as alarmed. “Maybe we should call it a night,” she says, pushing back from the table.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric echoes, and he stands. “Vince?”  
  
Vincent looks up, and Lois watches them have a conversation only with their eyes, and then Vincent nods slowly and stands. “Where are you going?” Rita asks.  
  
“I dunno, Ma,” he says. “I might get some air.”  
  
“That’s what you boys call it?”  
  
Now Eric’s blushing, and Lois thinks she might be, as well. “I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea,” Vincent says quietly. Lois closes her eyes, hoping Rita hasn’t heard, or that she might, for once, please, let something pass. Next to her, Eric’s whole body tenses, and when she opens her eyes he’s looking at Vincent.  
  
“Me either,” Rita says, her voice hard, the same hard angry sneer of a voice she used to use on Lou and all the others. “I’ve got no idea why you thought you could come in here and tell me you’re a goddamned -”  
  
“Don’t,” Eric says over her, quick, and his voice has a similar hardness that Lois doesn’t recognize.  
  
“Don’t you even start with me,” Rita says. “Don’t you even — you come into my house, after this?”  
  
“I was invited,” Eric starts, and Vincent cuts in.  
  
“Don’t  _you_  start with  _him_ ,” Vincent says, and Lois feels a small thrill of pride and surprise, that he’s standing up for her Eric. “You have stuff you want to say, you say it to me.”  
  
“I’ve got plenty to say, and I’ll say it to whoever I goddamn well please,” she says.  
  
“Then fucking say it,” Vincent says. “It’s gotta be better than this weird silent treatment crap, Ma.”  
  
Lois thinks, Oh, honey, no. Because silence can be bad, but words can make it concrete, and Rita brings curses like builders bring cement blocks.  
  
“Oh, I’m sorry, Vincent, that I couldn’t get my head around this fast enough to make happy in-law chatter at dinner,” she says. “Jesus fucking Christ, did you really think it would be OK with me, that things would just be fine?”  
  
“I thought you’d maybe make an effort,” Vincent says. He rubs his face, and his shoulders are pulled so far forward they look like wings. “What do you want from me, Ma?”  
  
“I want to know why the fuck would you want to do this,” she says. “I want to know what the fuck you’re thinking, maybe screwing up your career, screwing up your family, your life. Why are you -”  
  
“Because I love him, Ma,” Vincent says, with that beautiful, projecting voice that they used to hear in the high school plays. Perfect for performance, but she’s never seen him raw and raging like this. “I love him like you never loved Dad, like you never loved Mark or Tony or Ron or Elliot or any of those guys. I love him, and I’m not making your mistakes, I’m sticking this out. I’m not like you.”  
  
“You aren’t supposed to be like me,” Rita snaps, her hands flying up. “You’re supposed to be a man!”  
  
Eric takes a step and Lois grabs him, puts her arms around him quick to stop him rushing forward. She can see it; he wants to be there, between Vincent and his mother, and though she doesn’t blame him she knows this is a fight they need to have on their own.  
  
Vincent laughs, a terrible, bloody laugh, like he’s not surprised. “Maybe you raised me wrong, huh? Maybe if I’d ever seen a man around, for more than a couple nights -”  
  
Rita slaps him. Vincent laughs again, but Lois can see tears in his eyes. Eric jerks like he was hit, and Lois holds on, knows that he won’t stay still for much more.   
  
“You don’t get this from me,” Rita says. Her voice is low and angry and dangerous, and she’s pointing at Vincent. “You think that I would ever — that I could ever — this is sick,” she says, and when her finger swivels toward Eric, Lois pulls him close. “This, what you two are doing, this isn’t anything you get from me. This is wrong, Vincent, this is disgusting. To think —”  
  
“Enough.” Lois doesn’t realize the voice is hers until she sees Vincent looking at her, until she sees Rita’s frozen face. She clears her throat, steps away from Eric, and holds out one hand. “Vincent, come on.” He blinks, almost flinches, but Lois knows what’s needed. “Come on, you come home with us,” she says more gently, and he walks toward her when she gestures.  
  
“Lois, don’t you dare,” Rita says, as Lois closes her hand around Vincent’s arm, guiding him to the door. “We aren’t through with this.”  
  
“For right now, you are,” Lois says. “Boys, let’s go.” Eric puts a hand on Vincent’s back as they walk through the door, and Lois turns. “Don’t talk about my son that way again, Rita, you understand me?”  
  
“I don’t understand a goddamn thing,” Rita calls after her.  
  
The boys are already climbing the stairs next door, Vincent two steps ahead of Eric, both of them with their heads down. Lois walks slowly, pauses at the bottom of the stairs and looks up. Vincent’s standing with his hands in his pockets, and Eric just looks lost, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Lois shakes her head, then climbs to stand next to her son. “Run get me some cigarettes,” she says, and Eric’s head snaps around.  
  
“What? Ma, right now?”  
  
“Right now, Eric Joseph,” she says, and then softens her tone. “Vincent and I will be in the kitchen.”  
  
He sighs, then nods, then steps forward and seems to debate for a second whether to touch Vincent or not. Vincent doesn’t move, though, and in the end Eric just jogs down the stairs and out into the street. Lois takes Vincent’s arm and unlocks the door. “Come on, honey,” she says, and leads him into their place.  
  
Inside, she directs him to the kitchen table and then starts checking her cabinets for tea. It seems like the thing to drink, until she sees a bottle of cooking sherry in the back and realizes maybe this calls for stronger measures. She takes down a glass and sets it on the table, intending to get the whiskey from the cabinet in the living room. Vincent is sitting with his hands flat on the tabletop, and he speaks without looking up.  
  
“I really do love him, Lois,” he says, and then he looks up. The tears have spilled over, maybe once, but his eyes are hard and sure, challenging her to express a doubt or a condemnation.   
  
She feels her own eyes sting. “Honey,” she says, and puts her hand on one of his thin shoulders. “All these years you called me Mom, why would you stop now?”  
  
Vincent blinks, then nods, and then suddenly his shoulders heave. She pulls his head against her stomach and he puts his arms around her waist and he just sobs. Lois strokes his hair and makes the best motherly shushing noises she knows, listens as heartbreak pours from this boy that loves her boy. Her face is wet, too, when Eric walks in the door.  
  
“God,” he says, and drops the cigarettes onto the counter. He doesn’t cross the room, but he looks like he wants to. “Vince?”  
  
Vincent pulls back, wipes his eyes with the back of his hands, and Lois lets her hand fall just to his shoulder. “It’s OK,” Vincent says, completely unconvincing. “I’m fine, E.”  
  
Eric looks from her to Vincent, and Lois draws back to wipe her own eyes. She tilts her head at the other chair, and Eric slips into it, scoots close to Vincent, and Vincent rests his head on Eric’s shoulder and puts his hand on Eric’s leg. When Eric looks up, she can see the question in his eyes, and she almost laughs.  
  
“Dear,” she says, holding up the cigarettes, “ _this_  is a disgusting habit.”  
  
“We don’t smoke,” Vincent says, his voice small, and Lois laughs, and then so does Eric, and after a minute Vincent smiles a little, too.  
  
“It’s fine,” Lois says, her cigarette lit. “I’m glad for you.”  
  
Eric rubs Vincent’s back. “So you stay with us for a while,” he says, and Vincent glances up at her.  
  
“Do you drink decaf?” she asks.  
  
“Will it have whiskey in it?”  
  
She smiles. She doesn’t quite have it in her, though, to say what should be said, what would be most comforting. Instead, it’s Eric who says, “She’ll get over it.” Lois turns away, walking into the living room to find the whiskey. She doesn’t think Rita will get over it, really. Rita won’t even want to. Unless Lois is off the mark, Rita’s going to wear this new revelation like a brand around town, like a scarlet letter of woe. She’ll be the mother whose heart was broken by her golden son, and she’ll trade on that sympathy to be the center of attention for as long as she can.  
  
Somehow, though, Lois can forgive her, because she’s a mother of boys, and boys will always break your heart. She walks back into the kitchen and sees Eric whispering into Vincent’s ear, and wonders if that’s advice she should pass on, now, to her son.


	3. Chapter 3

The boys stay. Lois wakes up the morning after their disastrous dinner, thinking Eric will have made arrangements to flee to California in the middle of the night. Instead, when she goes down for her coffee, she finds Vincent sitting at her dining room table, tapping messages into his phone.  
  
“Morning,” he says, grinning. He’s fully awake, though dressed only in pajama bottoms, no shirt to hide his rather tan and toned chest. Handsome little devil my boy’s landed, she thinks, and smiles to herself.  
  
“Are you a morning person?” she asks.  
  
He shrugs. “Not always. Lately, I guess. I’ve been waking up early —” he pauses, and when she turns she sees him blushing.  
  
“To sneak out of my house,” she says, and Vincent grins again.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Is Eric awake?”  
  
“Nah,” he says. “He needs at least eight hours.”  
  
“Mm, just like me,” she says. “His father never needed that much sleep.”  
  
“Yeah, I can run OK on five or six,” Vincent says. “But then I crash pretty hard.”  
  
“That’s what God made the weekends for.” He nods. The phone buzzes and chirps under his fingers, and he scowls at the screen. “Business?” Lois asks.  
  
“Turtle,” he says. He sets the phone down. “He’s anxious to get back to California.”  
  
Lois concentrates on getting the coffee set up. “Are you heading back, then?” she asks.  
  
“Not yet,” he says, and she feels a quick flutter of relief. “We said we’d stay the month. There’s still some stuff I want to do, and -” And his mother, Lois thinks, not having to turn around to know that Vincent’s looking at the south wall.  
  
“Of course,” she says. “Well, I’m happy to hear it. Though if you’re going to be up early, I might have to teach you to make coffee.”  
  
“Yeah, I’d be happy to,” he says, and he’s smiling again when she turns around.  
  


* * *

  
  
Vincent’s always smiling, when she sees him that week. Whether it’s in the early morning or at the dinner table, the kid seems to have a big sunshiny smile waiting. And it gets a little bigger whenever Eric walks into the room.  
  
Eric doesn’t smile so much. Eric, in fact, seems to be carrying the worrying weight for them both, worrying what Rita might do next, or what she might say and to whom. She can still see the fight bouncing around in his head; of course it is. Even Lois can still hear Rita’s vicious words. She wants to talk with him about it, but he’s always around Vincent, and Lois doesn’t want to speak ill of Rita in front of her son. Even if she deserves it.  
  
The boys stay and they stay in the house, mostly. Sometimes they go out for drinks with the other boys, late in the evening, and sometimes the others come over in the afternoons and hang out at her place, but mostly it’s just the three of them. After dinner, they all sit in the living room, Vincent close to Eric on the couch, Lois in her favorite armchair. They don’t touch very much, and Lois wonders whether this is conscious effort or just habit. There can’t be that many places where it’s OK for them to act like a couple, she realizes. Vincent is still straight in the media, after all.  
  
Once, when she goes to brew an evening pot of decaf, she comes back and sees Eric talking to Vincent, his voice low and serious, and she hears him say, “We’ve gotta be ready for that,” and watches Vincent shake his head.  
  
“It’s going to be fine, E,” he says, and settles back in, his head against Eric’s shoulder.  
  
“You gotta take this seriously,” Eric says, and Vince turns, just a little, and says something she can’t hear, and then suddenly he sits up and away. Lois goes back to her coffee maker, and a minute later she hears the front door open and close. When she walks back to the living room, only Eric is sitting on the couch, and he looks up. Lois tilts her head toward the door, and Eric shrugs. “Turtle’s, I guess,” he says.  
  
Lois carries a mug of coffee over to him and sits next to him on the couch. “Everything all right?”  
  
He shrugs and takes the coffee. “He’s just — he lives in Vinceworld, you know?” Lois nods, slowly, and waits for him to go on. “He thinks this thing with his mother is going to blow over.”  
  
“Mm,” Lois says. “This is going to be very hard on you both.”  
  
“No kidding,” Eric says. He sips the coffee.  
  
“That’s what you were fighting about?”  
  
He shrugs. “You know Rita, Ma,” he says. “She’s going to talk, and — we can’t have that. It’s gonna mess everything up. But he says she’ll be cool, and I just — it’s so hard,” he says.  
  
Lois sets her coffee down and puts her arm around Eric’s shoulder, kisses the side of his head. “I know, honey,” she says.   
  
“I can’t reason with him about this,” Eric mutters. “I can’t reason with him about anything, really.”  
  
She doesn’t doubt that at all, but all she says is, “Welcome to marriage.”   
  
Eric shakes his head and sighs. "Is that what this is? I thought maybe I was getting a cold.” Lois laughs. “Ma, I think I’ve been married longer than I even knew.”  
  
“Well, that makes two of us,” she says, and then he laughs, too.  
  
Vince comes back late that night. Lois hears Eric’s phone ring just after midnight, then Eric’s feet on the stairs. She lays still and hears the rise and fall of their voices in the kitchen, and though she knows she shouldn’t, she creeps over and opens her door so she can hear what they’re saying, not just the tone.  
  
“You think I don’t know she’s crazy?” Vincent says, and Lois winces. His voice is a little too loud, and she guesses he’s drunk. “I lived with her for eighteen years.”  
  
“So what, Vince,” Eric says. He sounds so tired and discouraged. “What do you want? You want to leave?”  
  
“No, I want to fix this,” Vincent says. “I want — she doesn’t really mean that stuff,” he says. “She always says crazy shit, she was always like this.” Eric says something she can’t hear. “Fuck you,” Vince says, voice rising again. “Fuck — she’s my mother, she’s not going to —”  
  
“Why not?” Eric says. Lois realizes her breath is coming fast. “You think she’s not going to say anything just to be nice? This is gonna be the one time she keeps her mouth shut, why?”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“I want you to understand this is not going to get better,” Eric says. “I want you to get that. We’re fucked. You’re fucked. She’s going to say something to someone and then it’s all over. So you’ve got to make a decision. Either you make her a liar or we stick this out.”  
  
Lois gasps. Eric is  _asking_ him to break things off? She has no idea what Vincent might say. He’s impulsive, he’s loyal, he really does seem to be in love with her son — but he’s also, as he’s always been, in love with himself, and she’s not sure exactly how those competing interests are going to work out.  
  
And she suddenly doesn’t want to know the answer, not yet. This is a conversation they should be allowed to have by themselves. She gets up to close her door, and in her hurry she knocks a book off her bedside stand. It hits the wood floor with a heavy thump, and then there’s silence through the house. Lois sighs. Since they know she’s up, anyway, she decides to use the bathroom, and when she comes out, Eric’s waiting at the top of the stairs.  
  
“Ma, I’m sorry, did we wake you?” he asks.  
  
“No, honey,” she says, patting his shoulder. There’s still a light on in the kitchen. “You know me, I sleep like the dead.”  
  
He nods. She wants to pull him into a hug, suddenly, because he looks so tired and sad, but she settles instead for squeezing his tight shoulder. “Get some sleep,” she tells him, and he nods and heads back downstairs. She listens, as she goes to bed, but there’s no noise, now; either they’re whispering or Vincent is long gone. She hopes the sounds of two people climbing the stairs will wake her, but instead falls into a deep, uninterrupted sleep without knowing what’s happened.  
  
In the morning, Vincent isn’t in the kitchen when she goes down for coffee. Lois feels vaguely ill about the whole thing, and skips her morning cup. He’s left, she guesses. He’s going to break Eric’s heart after all. After all of this. She goes to work just to get out of the house, because the boys probably need to talk things through a bit more. By lunch, her dread has turned into a headache, and when Del asks if she’s feeling all right she says, honestly, “No.” He lets her go home for the rest of the day.  
  
Lois considers  _not_  going home, but she’s tired and could use a little aspirin and a nap. So she takes the bus and stops at the grocery store to pick up some tea — it still feels like the right drink — and then she picks up a ham, anyway, because she said she would. If things are going wrong between him and Vince, maybe Eric won’t go back to California right away. She picks up a box of the cereal he likes before she checks out.  
  
The bags are heavy, and it takes her longer than usual to get home. She has to concentrate on her steps, not used to wrestling a ten pound ham in addition to her purse in her work shoes. Maybe this is why she doesn’t notice Rita until she’s right up next to her, just outside the Chase place.  
  
“Mother of the fucking year,” Rita greets her.  
  
Lois sighs. “Rita,” she says, turning, slowly, still cradling the ham. “How are you?”  
  
“How am I? Worried sick, is how I am,” she says, taking a drag off a cigarette. They quit smoking together last spring. “I haven’t heard from Vincent in five days, since that stupid little scene at dinner.”  
  
“You know where he is,” Lois says. She’s too tired for this crap.  
  
She snorts. “Yeah, I guess I do know exactly where he is. You think that’s —”  
  
“We’re going to talk about this here?” Lois snaps. There are three women standing on the corner with shopping bags, waiting for a bus, and they’re all looking over in curiosity. “What am I saying, you’ve probably already told the whole fucking neighborhood, right?”  
  
Rita looks briefly taken aback. “What are you talking about?” she says. “You think I want people to know he’s a —”  
  
“Stop,” Lois says. She rubs her forehead. She can feel the other women watching them, listening. This must be what Eric feels like, she thinks, whenever he goes out with Vincent. “You want to talk about this, let’s go inside, all right?” she says, keeping her voice quiet. “Not out here, where everyone can eavesdrop.”  
  
“Is he in there?”  
  
Lois looks over and sees a mix of emotions flicker across Rita’s face: hope, fear, anger. “I don’t know,” Lois says. “But let’s find out.”  
  
She unlocks the door and isn’t sure what she’s hoping for. Maybe Vincent will be in, maybe they can all talk this through, rationally. Maybe the boys will be gone, and she can say what needs to be said.  
  
It looks like the latter when she opens the door; the living room and kitchen are empty, and she doesn’t hear any noise from upstairs. She feels relieved as she leads Rita into the kitchen. Rita’s been here a million times before. She starts making coffee while Lois puts the groceries away, and ten minutes later they’re sitting at the table, each with a cup, Rita adding cream and sugar.  
  
“You said some pretty horrible stuff,” Lois says.  
  
Rita shrugs, then nods. “You know what he tells me? He says, Ma, I’ve been hooking up with E, I think I’m maybe kind of gay. No introduction, no easing into it, just comes up while I’m trying to get the kitchen cleaned and says it. Like it’s no big deal.”  
  
“Why does it have to be a big deal?” Lois asks. She sips her coffee - it’s too strong, the way Rita always makes it — and shakes her head. “They’ve been together about every day of their lives, why is it so different now?”  
  
“It  _is_ ,” Rita says. She gulps the coffee like she wishes it was bourbon. Lois knows the feeling. “You’re telling me you have no problem with this?”  
  
“It’s not what I would’ve picked for him,” Lois admits. All she’s ever wanted for Eric is an easier life — a life where he doesn’t have to scramble for every dollar, where he doesn’t have to worry every single day about the rent, the bills, the price of ham, the hours left in the day. And now that he’s escaped all of that, she doesn’t want him to take on this new set of worries, that’s true, but if it makes him happy, well. That’s about as good. Happiness is actually all she ever dared hope for him. “I don’t care who he sleeps with,” Lois says. “Honestly, I don’t. I’m just fucking glad he’s out of here. That’s what we worked for, isn’t it? I’d rather he’s screwing Vincent than he’s working at the goddamned plant.”  
  
Rita snorts. “You think that’s the deal he made?”  
  
“Christ, Rita,” Lois says, setting her cup down. There’s a sharp pulsing pain behind her eyes. Twenty years of living next door to this woman have taught her, at least, that it’s not worth it to get angry when Rita lashes out. She’s always trying to get a rise, never thinking about what comes out of her mouth. It’s a wonder her boys survived at all, Lois thinks, taking a deep breath. “You’re telling me — you look at them, you can’t tell? You think they’re just doing this to get at you? Those boys have been together almost every day since they were babies. They’re — I believe them, I think they love each other. Maybe it’s not how we thought it would go, but why does it have to be so bad? They’re  _happy_. They’re in love. You remember that?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rita says, “and I remember exactly where it got me. Six kids and a tiny apartment, a drunk fucking loser of a husband, bills I couldn’t pay, nightmares all the fucking time. You wanted Eric to get out? I wanted Vincent to be safe,” she says, and she rubs the backs of her fingers over her eyes, smudges her mascara. “I met Lou, my mother said, The fuck are you doing with that loser? And I said, Ma, I love him, and you know what she said?”  
  
“Same thing my mother said.”  
  
Rita nods. “Love don’t pay the bills. Love don’t run the fucking heater in winter.”  
  
“They have that stuff covered,” Lois says. “They’re safe from that, Rita.”  
  
“They’re just babies,” Rita says. She wipes her eyes again. “You know what they do to boys like that here. You know what I mean. He’s never going to be safe, now. He’s never —”  
  
“Eric will take care of him,” Lois says, suddenly teary herself. “They’ll take care of each other. They always have.”  
  
“Christ,” Rita says, and she gets up to grab a box of Kleenex for the both of them. They’re still sitting there, dabbing at their eyes, ignoring their cooling coffee, when the boys walk in.  
  
Vincent stops dead in the doorway until Eric touches his arm. “Ma?” he says.  
  
Rita sighs and looks across at Lois, a long-suffering look that all mothers share:  _what are you gonna do?_  “C’mere, baby, your mother needs a hug,” she says, and holds out her arm. Vincent pauses, and for Lois it’s the look on his face that’s the worst — uncertainty, like he’s possibly being drawn into a trap. But Eric nudges him forward, and he steps up, and Rita stands and he wraps his arms around her. Eric walks over and puts a hand on Lois’s shoulder. A few more tears work their way down her face.  
  
“What’s going on?” Eric asks, his voice low, his eyes trained on Vincent and Rita. Vincent has his eyes closed, and Rita’s holding on to him like he might fly away.  
  
“Your mother could use some aspirin,” Lois says, standing. “Come upstairs with me.”  
  
She can tell it’s hard for him to leave the kitchen, but he does it, anyway, her sweet obedient boy. Upstairs, she goes to her bedroom, and Eric brings her the bottle of Tylenol and a cup of water. “You all right?” he asks, sitting beside her.  
  
“I could use a hug, too,” she says, and Eric puts both arms around her shoulders. She sinks into him and thinks about what Rita said. Sure, they’re never going to be safe, that’s true. But they have things she could have never dreamed of. They have money, and power, and red carpets and spotlights. They have each other.  
  
“Ma?” Eric says, and Lois sniffles.  
  
“They’re going to be OK,” she says.  
  
“What’d you say?”  
  
She shrugs. “Nothing, really,” she says. “She’s worried. She’s scared.” Lois looks up. “Are you boys all right?”  
  
“What? We’re fine,” Eric says.  
  
Lois narrows her eyes. “I heard your argument last night,” she says.   
  
Eric raises an eyebrow. “Thought you were sleeping.” She shakes her head. “We’re OK,” he says. “We were gonna come back to tell you, we were going to leave tonight. I guess maybe now, he might want to stay for a while, huh?”  
  
She nods. She wants to say everything’s going to be OK, but she’s not sure. “I don’t want you to go back yet.”  
  
“Aw, Ma,” Eric says.  
  
“I bought a ham,” she says, and Eric laughs. Lois meets his eyes. He is the most beautiful boy in the world, and he’s barely hers anymore. “I miss your father all the time,” she says.  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says, his voice deep, suddenly both sad and adult. Suddenly very Joe.   
  
“I’m saying — hang on to Vincent, all right? If he’s — if you’re serious, you just, you hold on to him, all right? You take care of each other.”  
  
“Who’s going to take care of you?” Eric asks.  
  
“Same person as always,” Lois says.  
  


* * *

  
  
They eat the ham for Sunday dinner, everyone — the Turtletaubs, the Chases, Eric, Freddy, everyone. She notices that Vincent and Eric are careful with each other, not explicitly affectionate, and she’s confused until she realizes — Ada doesn’t know, Freddy doesn’t know. She feels like it’s all in the open, but for these boys, the secret is still exactly that. A secret.  
  
They fly home in the middle of the next week. There’s a limo to take them to the airport and a driver to carry their bags. While Eric’s busy talking to the driver about some change in their plans, Lois walks up behind Vincent and puts an arm around his waist.  
  
“Hey, Mom,” he says, and Lois smiles.  
  
“Mom-in-law, to you,” she says, and he grins and hugs her.  
  
“Thank you,” he says. “For everything. For talking to my mom —”  
  
“I didn’t —”  
  
“You did,” Vincent says.  
  
On the other side of the car, Eric bellows, “Turtle, Jesus, come on!” and Vincent squeezes her shoulders.  
  
“Thank you for him,” he says, and Lois feels herself blush.  
  
There are so many things she wants to say to him, right now. She wants to tell him how to be good to Eric; she wants to tell him what she’ll do if he ever hurts him. But there’s one thing that’s most important. “He’s my baby,” she says. “Vincent, he is all I have.” Vincent looks down at her, a small, serious frown on his beautiful face. Lois cups his cheek. “I’m trusting him to you,” she says. “You take care of him.”  
  
His eyes get a little wide, and he looks over at Eric, then back at her. He kisses her forehead. “I will,” he says. “I promise.”  
  
“Don’t promise her anything you can’t carry through with,” Eric says, appearing right beside them. He’s grinning. “She’s tougher than she looks.”  
  
“And that’s saying something.” Lois pats Vincent’s cheek, then reaches for her son. “OK, you be good, too,” she says, and he laughs.  
  
“I’m always good,” Eric says. “I was raised right.”  
  
“I know it,” she says. She kisses his cheek. “I love you, you know that, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I love you, too.” He smiles. “Ma —”  
  
“Just call when you get there, all right?” she says. Her eyes feel a little watery, so she steps back, fast, and shields them with her hand, as though maybe it’s the sun. “A mother worries.”  
  
“Will do,” Eric says. “Thanks for everything.”  
  
“Come back soon,” Lois says, waving as he slides into the limousine.  
  
And then they’re gone. The limo pulls away and the street seems smaller, dirtier, than it did before. Lois looks over and sees Rita sitting on her porch stoop, a cigarette burning between two fingers. She offers it up, and Lois takes a satisfying drag.  
  
“I think you need to work on your flying phobia,” Lois says, handing the smoke back.  
  
Rita nods. “I need to work on a lot of stuff, according to you,” she says, but she smiles. “Come on, mother of the year, I got a pie that needs some attention.”  
  
“I never say no to pie,” Lois says. “I’ll make the coffee, though, how about?”  
  
Rita snorts. “If I wanted to drink water, I’d just drink water,” she says.  
  
So Lois lets her. She stands at the living room window, looking down the block while Rita fusses in the kitchen. Outside, children are walking to school, bundled in coats even though today is warmer than the last few. She can see in a few windows, and she wonders what the other families worry about, knows she can guess. She closes her eyes long enough to remember Joe the way she likes best, when they were young and first married and very poor, Eric sleeping in a hand-me-down bassinet in the kitchen so he’d be warm enough because they couldn’t pay to heat the whole place. Joe sat in a hard kitchen chair beside the bassinet, one hand dangling down to touch his son’s tiny fingers, the other propped on the counter, holding up his head while he slept off a ten-hour day at the plant. Joe was tough and certain, then, just one man against the whole world. And look at us now, she thinks. Look at our boy now.  
  
“You asleep?” Rita asks, handing her a cup of coffee.  
  
Lois shrugs and opens her eyes. “Just a little tired,” she says. “It’s been a long month.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rita agrees. “Still. I wish they would’ve stayed longer.”  
  
“Yeah.” Everywhere, there are dramas being played out even now that are harder, darker than their own. She still has her son, after all; she still has her friends. Everything is going to be fine. “Me, too.”


End file.
